Teleconferencing is a meeting between two or more participants that are not at the same place at the same time. Teleconferencing is a low-cost alternative to getting large groups of people in a single place at the same time for the purpose of having a meeting. The best known example of a teleconference is a conference call with more than two people participating in the call. These teleconferences can have upwards of several hundred people and can last for several hours. Getting these several hundred people in the same place at the same time is simply cost prohibitive.
Often, only a portion of a teleconference is useful to a user. Because teleconferences can last for hours at a time, it is wasteful for a user to wait for the small portion of the teleconference that applies to him or her.
Very often there are many teleconferences happening simultaneously, and a user may wish to participate in a portion of more than one. For instance, with reference to FIG. 2, a user may be interested in Bananas and X-Ray technology. Participating in two conferences simultaneously is not practical, as a user can only listen to one teleconference at a time. Having two conferences open is wasteful of bandwidth on a network.